F-35 Canopy Mapper

The F-35 ACM has already demonstrated a significant savings in time and labor costs of at least forty times better than previous mapping technologies and equipment. Previous mappers would require more than one week of measurement time to fully measure the F35 canopy to the same resolution and range of angles. The new mapper finishes its complete set of measurements in only about one hour after the canopy is loaded—a significant benefit over the thousands of canopies that will have to be measured during F-35 production.

Changes in azimuth angles are handled by rotating the canopy on a platform about the central test beam projector. Changes in elevation are handled by placing the wavefront sensors on a moveable arm. Canopy rotation motors and wavefront sensor cameras, as well as real-time data acquisition and storage, are fully under computer control. Canopies are lowered onto and removed from the fixture by the same overhead crane system that moves major assemblies on the F-35 production line.

The F-35 advanced canopy mapper simultaneously measures optical deviations for the total region for a pilot’s head and eyes by using a large collimator and a laser to produce a large pattern of test beams into the wavefront sensors. This approach significantly reduces the time required to measure a canopy by eliminating the need to take measurements at different eye positions.